


Methuselah's Children

by Wind_Ryder



Series: Methuselah's Children [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dated terms due to first person POV, Don't copy to another site, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Learning how to be immortal, M/M, OC Character Death, POV First Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Sexual Violence, The Crusades, Violence, dealing with immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25344283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: Nicolo di Genova dies in a battle on his way to freeing the Holy Land from evil. He wakes up again, and again, and again.The man before him dies at Nicolo's blade, but he too wakes up again, and again, and again.And when he asks why they cannot die, he does not get an answer.No one knows.So he decides to keep searching, until he knows.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Lykon, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Quynh | Noriko/Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Lykon
Series: Methuselah's Children [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839811
Comments: 123
Kudos: 639





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please keep in mind for this story that Nicolo begins at a point where he is the stereotypical 11th century nobleman turned priest. He has a lot of learning to do. That said, because it's in first person, his terminology and behaviors may be repulsive to a modern audience. I ask only that you give him time. He literally doesn't know any better yet.

I die on the battlefield with a sword slashing across my chest at the same time I plunge my blade into the neck of my killer. I die, thinking of my church in Genova. My brothers will not mourn me, but my sister Maria-Theresa...Maria-Theresa will mourn me I think. She was the only one of our family to visit the monastery when I took my vows. The only one to come with tidings and good cheer. On feast days, she’d come with donations. She took the sacrament from Father Thomas and left behind new books for me to read. She even brought news of my brothers and mother. Never of our father. Maria-Theresa would not have imagined I’d want to know of our father. But as I lay bleeding, dying in a land so far from home, I think of my church, and how my father came to visit me before the war started. “A true son of mine,” he said, “would not idle in a church when the holy land is in need of salvation. A true son of mine would show his true piety and fight.” In those final moments, I wonder if he always knew I would die. 

My mind shows me images as my blood flees my body. A woman, long hair and flowing gown, hands raised in victory with a sword held aloft. A man with dark skin holding a water skein and laughing at a fire. Another woman, exotic in ways I’d never known before, her eyes sharply narrowed, her hair black as ink, her skin so smooth and delicate, and hands working over a blade with a whetstone. She is laughing, bright and musical. They all are. These three people. They’re sprawling together. And then. _Then._ I see him. The face of the man I killed. His eyes opening with a strangled breath as the world waged chaos around him. Oh, I thought. I failed. I did not kill my killer. 

It had not occurred to me yet, that neither has he killed me. 

Sounds rush all around me. Stampeding animals. Hooves. They trample over my broken body, and I wonder if this was how long it usually takes to die. I’d always imagined it to be so much faster in the past. As though it would happen instantaneously once the death knell came. And yet, it felt elongated. Drawn out.

I open my eyes. Night has fallen on the battlefield, where once it was day. Coughing, I bring a hand to my chest. Though coated in blood, I find no wound. _In nomine patri…_ coughing again. I bring myself to my knees. There is the man who killed me. His fingers twitching and his eyes blinking madly at the sky. Fear grips my heart. I scramble for a weapon. My sword has fallen from my fingers when I’d taken myself for dead. Now, I take it back. I raise it up, thanking God for the mistake I must have made. I had not died, merely been rattled by the blow. But my enemy lives. And I must—

He grips a spear just as I descend my blade into his chest. It catches me in the throat, in the same place I’d thought I’d struck him. Ah. This must truly be death now. I close my eyes and dream of the angel and her fellows once more. The angel is dancing with the other woman. Their hands and bodies far too close. It brings shame to my face as I gaze upon them. They are too beautiful for a mortal such as I. I turn away, turn to the man with the dark skin who watches them with tender awe. I wonder how he can look at them with such a gaze and not feel it a sin. 

I wake once more, and it is still night. I touch at my throat. The spear is gone. The blood still splatters my skin, but I feel no wound. Terror rises in me. I scramble to my feet. The saracen is also climbing to his feet. I cannot find my sword. It has dropped again, lost amongst the battlefield. I stumble backwards, prayers tripping from my tongue as I stare at the demon before me. 

God has kept me safe, God does not will me to die, but neither has God willed the saracen to die. The saracen who is now approaching me. The saracen who did not share my foolishness. He had a blade in his hand. He had _my_ blade in his hand. My feet lose their way beneath my body. I fall, gasping as something sharp penetrates my back and thrusts through my chest. Blood coughs up from my mouth. The saracen pauses above me. He tilts his head. Hate and despair roil about as I close my eyes and am greeted by the face of my angel once more. 

She’s lying on her back. Her mouth is pressed sinfully to the lips of the woman. Her hands are lost between the woman’s legs. The dark skinned man is there as well. Cupping breasts with his palms and pressing his lips to their fevered skin. I awaken with a shout, blinking desperately up at the pre-dawn sky. 

The saracen is sitting at my side. He says something. Something I cannot understand. His language is as foreign as it is silky on my ears. Father Thomas had called it the tongue of the devil, and I wonder if I’ve been cursed. I roll over, gagging. Bile presses up from my stomach. I spew it onto the dirt beneath my face. My head spins rapidly. I pat the ground around me, desperate for something—anything—to end this nightmare. 

The saracen reaches a hand toward me just as I find a blade. I slash it as hard as I can, and almost smile when I hear him hiss in pain. This time, I throw myself at him. I stab as hard and as fast as I am able. Up and down my blade goes. It breaches through his chest, his face, his neck. I do not stop until there is nothing recognizably human in him at all. 

Then and only then do I let myself collapse by his corpse. Then and only then do I permit myself the first chance to cry. I make the sign of the cross, and I thank God for his mercy in sparing my life. I think of Maria-Theresa and how she had been so worried when she’d heard my intentions to join the crusade. But this, more than anything, shows that we are on the righteous path. God has not allowed me to perish. My duty is just. 

And that’s when the saracen breathes once more, and I sit still as a statue as he rises. 

My fingers squeeze at the knife as he meets my eyes. They are brown. Slowly, he removes his headpiece. Long dark curls tumble about his face. He presses a hand to his mouth. Then his eyes. He sweeps his hair from where it fell, tucking it behind his ears. He mutters words I do not understand. But he makes no move for a weapon. I lower my knife. 

I have no more prayers. I do not know whether I should be thankful or despairing. I ask him if he speaks my language. He does not respond. Instead he pulls up a sword from where it lies at his side. I jolt my knife back into position, but he raises one hand as though to stay my assault. I watch, breathless, as he brings the sword to his own arm. He draws the blade across his skin. We watch as the skin grows whole once more. No wound. No sign of trauma. He looks at me. I look at my knife. I rest it on the back of my arm and draw the same line he had. We watch as the skin grows whole once more. No wound. No sign of trauma. 

Then, in silence, we sit there as the sun rises. Neither of us dies again that day. 

* * *

The saracen is named Yusuf. He scrunches his nose up when I tell him my name, but he pronounces it well enough. I know my attempts at the same are not nearly as successful. I repeat it time and again, and irritation seems a permanent fixture on his face as he attempts to correct me. During these lessons, he leads me off the battlefield. 

We walk south. My armies have come from the west. His from the east. There are Turks to the north. So south we travel. I remove the armor I’d worn. It is heavy and meaningless. If I cannot die, then why burden myself with armor that burns in the sun and seems to delight in suffocating the breath from my chest. 

I do not know his language. He does not know mine. We walk the desert in search of food and drink, and repeat words to one another as though eventually we will form an understanding. We stop five times a day for Yusuf to pray. He kneels and bows over and over. He speaks words I do not understand in a cadence I am unfamiliar with. It is not the same as our prayers at the monastery, nor even the positioning, and yet I sense an understanding in them. A kind of knowledge that I’d not expected to have in my lifespan. (And perhaps, that still holds true, for this is no longer my first life, is it?) 

When he prays, he does so with the same fervor as our most devoted parishioners. He seems to know, intrinsically when to become a supplicant. His posture and positioning look well trained to my eye. He even grudgingly attempts to instruct me in the practice, though I resist. Our circumstances aside, I am not of his people, and his people are the infidels who have conquered Jerusalem. 

I find myself, five times a day, praying to my God. Reciting prayers that I had been taught both in cradle and once I’d been ordained. I clasp my hands together. I make the sign of the cross. I pray on my knees, and he prays and bows and sings and chants. He scowls at me occasionally, and I continue to pray through the expressions. Jerusalem is in the same direction as Mecca. We both pray south. I know of no other way to look. 

When we are done, we stand and continue walking. There is nothing left to do. 

* * *

We avoid battles. 

His side and my side fight whenever they meet, but by joining either we are ensuring only that it ends for us the same as it had before. We are obligated to fight one another since I cannot allow him to kill my side with his ability, and he cannot allow me to do the same. By avoiding the conflict, we have removed ourselves from the possibility of interference. If one side wins over the other, then it is fate. It is meant to be. 

But there are times when we stray too close to a battlefield and we watch from afar as the two sides clash against one another. The saracen and the christian army batter at shields, they stab and slice and hack away at one another’s lives. It is gruesome in its entirety. I find myself praying under my breath. Whispering hope that these souls will find peace on the other-side. Wondering if any will rise the way I did. 

No one does. When the battles are over, we walk through the fields of corpses. None wake. And at night, I dream of the angel and her companions, and I wonder what it means. 

* * *

It is many months before we engage in a proper conversation, Yusuf and I. Many months before we advance our poor linguistic translations from the occasional noun to an adjective to verbs that can actually form sentences. We speak broken and awkward, most of the time spent in correction rather than conversation. 

We have taken to drawing in the sand. I explain, through a series of poorly made faces, this is my father, my mother, my three brothers, my sister, and I. He explains, through far better drawn faces, this is his father, his mother, his five sisters and him. He then draws lines through their faces. Dead. I ask him where he’s from. North Africa, but his family moved to Antioch to trade. And then...The siege was only a few years ago. I do not ask further. He asks me of Genova instead. 

I tell him what I can. I trip over his language more times than he does mine. My mouth is clumsy and weak against his persistent vowels. I grimace at my lack of consonants and he seems to delight in my defects. Somehow I inform him of my father’s wealth. Of my mother’s possible infidelity. Of the inheritance my mother wished I would claim, but my father forbade me from receiving. Of the late night order. Become a priest and reject any prospect of inheritance, or have an accident no one cares to think about. Then, of the second order. The second...encouragement. Prove I was his son by joining a war. 

“I love my sister,” I say. “I will miss her...but I will not see her again. I knew, even as I left, I would never see her again.”

I do not know if he understands me. He watches me with those brown eyes. Warm and deep like the darkest part of the ocean. He nods, once, sharply. Then he changes topic. He asks about Genova’s lands. Its crops. Its farming. He asks what I did before I became a priest. I tell him what I can. I tell him how the trees differ. How the ships came in every day from the sea, and how we would strip naked in the heat of the summer and languish in the waters. 

“Why did your people come here?” he asks eventually. 

“To rescue the Holy Land,” I tell him immediately. He frowns. 

“Come, Jerusalem is not far.” 

“It’s not?” 

It’s not. 

We walk in through the front gates. We walk to the churches that I’d been told were being destroyed by the day. We walk past the jews and the saracens conducting business in the street. They lived their lives uncaring of anything. I tried to find the vile filth that I’d been told of. I see only children in the street. Families out for their morning shopping. 

Worse yet, were the christians who lived in the city, uncaring of the state of their neighbors and chattering away with them as though their lives were unblemished by their governors. “Is this the city you wished to free?” Yusuf asks me, raising his brows and waiting for my answer. 

I had none to give him. “Where is the Holy Sepulcher?” I asked. He showed me the way. The church was built by Constantine. There, surrounded by a wooden structure, lay the holy bed. I fell to my knees and prayed. Like Jesus I too had risen from the dead. Time and time again. Why me? I asked God. But unlike the son of God, I received no answer. My angel was traveling far, far, away. I have no guidance from above. Only a saracen in a city that defied my expectations. 

And yet, still, life goes on. 

Yusuf knows someone in the city who offers us lodging for hard work. He accepts immediately, but I find myself too distracted by the churches of the city to follow suit. A priest, Father Michael, speaks to me in Latin and I nearly collapse in relief at the familiar language on his lips. It reminds me of hours spent at the monastery, Father Thomas’ sermons, and late nights consulting the gospels. I beg him for a chance to care for the church. I give him my credentials, I am desperate for his approval. 

He clothes me in the robes of his order and drapes a cross about my neck. I am to tend to the maintenance of the church. Fix the pews, clean the wax, mend books when they become tattered. I find the menial nature to be a balm against the chaos of my mind. Yusuf works hard in the city’s fields, and I am permitted my time in the church I’d come to rescue. I am given no mass to lead nor parishioners to counsel, but I find that the simple pleasure of being in service is too great to overlook. I thank Father Michael every morning and evening, and when I return to the room Yusuf has arranged for us I feel more at peace than I had been even before the war. 

* * *

In May 1099, things change. 

News comes that Arqa had been taken. The Fatimid governor, Iftikhar ad-Daula, calls for all Christians to be ejected from Jerusalem. Yusuf pulls the cross from my neck and tears the clothes from my back. He dresses me in the dress of the jews and tells me to work with a cobbler family not far from where we live. Father Michael and hundreds of young families are marched from the city. 

“I cannot stand by and do nothing,” I tell Yusuf.

“You cannot fight all of Jerusalem.” 

“Those people will starve! They’ll die!” 

“And you will not. What will you do, when they _know_ that you will not?” I flounder. I search for words I cannot recall in a language I have just learned. I long for the latin familiarity that I’d had with Father Michael, or even my blessed Genovan dialect once more. 

I watch the Christians be led away, and I help the jewish cobblers. My fingers fumble on the leather. I poke myself with their needles and I bleed freely over my samples, wounds healing and reopening with each poor stab. The family has three little girls, and they ask me questions in their own tongue and in Yusuf’s, and I try to answer when I can. Their hebrew is not wholly foreign, but I’d never committed myself to learning it. 

Now I try that too. But my languages have started to blend together, mixing inappropriately so that they laugh and call me ‘fool’ in every language they know. The youngest, Rebekah, she babbles tales in my ear and I can almost past my days thinking that it will be fine. That everything will be well. 

Yusuf said the christians would be allowed to return once the crusaders left. 

But in June, the crusaders come, and the siege starts. The city walls are thick and strong. The Fatimids are well armed. I wander the city helplessly, not knowing if I should be interfering or staying out of the way. I see Yusuf launching spears and arrows over the side of the wall at the invaders, and I yell at him that evening when he returns. 

He says, “They cannot reach us, it makes no difference.” 

But the siege persists. 

All through the city there is tension. I go to work under the sounds of fighting and terror. I listen as Rebekah tells me her tales, but they have turned gruesome in her imaginings as death and despair continue to rise up through the city. At night, I pace my room. Hissing to Yusuf that the christians only want to ensure that their holy city is safe. 

“And is it not holy to us? And was it not safe prior to them attacking? Were they not allowed here prior to their invasion?” 

I have no answers. 

“What do you imagine will happen if we open the gates?” Yusuf asks. “If we were to let them in?” 

“I...The soldiers would be killed,” I say slowly. 

“The soldiers? Just the soldiers? You think that? Truly?”

“They would not harm the civilians.” 

“You are a child,” Yusuf says. He leaves the room without saying anything else. 

That night, I dream of my angel on the field of battle, slaying her way through pale skinned enemies and laughing as the man and woman at her side join her in victory. 

The wall falls on July 14, and Yusuf was right.

Chaos bursts through the city. I die three times by crusaders swinging their blades and striking at me as I attempt to make my way to Rebekah’s home. I am covered in blood by the time I reach their door. It’s been kicked in. Rebekah’s father is dead, and her mother has been thrown on a table. There’s a man between her legs and I kill him before I know what I’m doing. I stab him brutally and throw him to the ground. Rebekah throws herself around my legs and sobs hysterically. 

“Stay, stay,” I tell her, my lips forming the words though I know not language they shaped. I barricade the door as best I can. I take up the dead man’s sword and start making my way to each window in the house. I close and lock them all. I blow out any candles that have been lit and I guide the children and their mother to hide in the cool dark. 

I stand before them, and hold my blade aloft. I tell myself that I will protect them until the end of the siege, and then I will guide them from the city to safety. I will not let them die. 

They die anyway. 

The crusaders light the city on fire. We are still inside when the house burns around us. 

Yusuf finds me hours or days later. Rebekah’s burnt corpse is pressed to my chest. I’m crying. I cannot hear what he’s saying. My clothes were lost in the blaze, but I am whole. I am whole while the sweet little girl, who liked to sing stories and whose parents made shoes, died in my arms. We were in the Holy City, and the good christians killed everyone. All the jews, all the saracens. They’re all gone. 

“We need to leave,” Yusuf says. He pulls me from Rebekah’s body. He dresses me when I prove useless to the task. We leave together. We are killed twice as we attempt our departure, but we wake each time. We leave the city. 

We do not go back. 

The first night in the desert, I weep for hours. I sob until there are no tears left to cry, and then sob harder despite their lack. Yusuf kneels before me. He presses a hand to my head, and whispers soft words. “They weren’t soldiers,” I say. “They weren’t doing anything wrong.” 

“That is true.” 

“Why? Yusuf why?” And he looks at me as if I should be the one answering my own question. 

“They are your people, Nicolo. Why did they do this to _us?”_ I think, I don’t know. I don’t know. 

So I say, “I don’t know.” 

* * *

In the morning, there are two women and a man sitting in our camp. I wake after Yusuf. I wake after he’d spoken to them at length. They turn to me as I open my eyes, still burning from crying so much the night before. I turn to them, my mouth dry and my body drained. It is my angel. 

The woman speaks Italian, she introduces herself as Andromache the Scythian. She says the angel is Quynh, and the man is Lykon. She says, “We are immortal, like you.”

“Why?” I ask. 

“Why what?” Andromache asks in turn. 

“Why are we like this?” 

They don’t know. But when I pray to God later that night, Andromache and Quynh laugh, and it is Yusuf who tells them they are cruel to do so. 

“God doesn’t exist,” the angel says in my tongue. Her vowels and consonants do not flow like Yusuf. They do not flow in any way I have known language to flow. I tremble before her. “We were there when your people thought up _God._ Abraham, Jesus, Mohammad. He’s just a story.” 

“You’re wrong.” 

“Wrong?” Quynh points towards Jerusalem. “If there is a God, then why did he let the city burn?”

“They-they were-” Father Thomas would have said that the saracens and jews deserved to die. That the christians were doing their duty to kill the infidels. The saracens made mockery of our faith and they had no place in the holy land. 

But. They were people. They were people and children and families. And God taught love, respect, understanding. He taught forgiveness. He said not to kill. He wouldn’t have let them die, would he have? Even if they were wrong? 

But then. He flooded the world once. He killed the Egyptians. Who was I to argue with God’s will. “It was God’s will,” I whispered. Yusuf glares at me over their heads. His fingers curl into fists. I cannot breathe as I look at him. He picks up a sword from where it rested by Quynh’s side. I die upon her blade, and wake on the desert sand. 

Yusuf refuses to speak to me after that. 

I cannot find it in me to blame him. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: continual mentions of child death, Nicolo's mental state is not fantastic

Lykon speaks the saracen tongue. He teaches it to me, more patient than Yusuf had been, and with more experience too. “I taught Andromache and Quynh,” he says one evening. I am not surprised. 

“What languages do you all speak?” I ask. I am informed they speak several franco-dialects, and the same for italy, latin, a few versions of Yusuf’s saracen, and hebrew. Lykon then lists languages I am wholly unfamiliar with. “Peace, peace, what is that? Where is that?” He frowns at my curiosity, but then pulls apart his pack in search of a scroll of parchment. There he unravels the strangest map I had ever seen. It shows lands I’d never known. Places I did not know could exist. 

“Quynh comes from here,” Lykon says, pointing to a territory so far to the east I scarce believed such a place possible. “I, from here.” At this, he directs his finger south, past Egypt into the heart of Africa itself. “And you know of Scythia, yes?” He moves his finger across the map anyway, just in case. 

I swallow and say, “But that was so long ago.” 

“Nicolo, we are immortal. We do not die. We do not age. You heard them say they were here before your God was made.”

Hearing it, and believing it are different matters. I nod despite myself and I keep my eyes directed to the map. It is filled with places. Names are scrawled in the margins. Lands I’d never dreamed of. “Tell me of this place?” I ask. And Lykon does. “What of here?” I ask again. He tells me without hesitation. 

We spend the night speaking of such things. And in the morning I ask more. I beg for stories. I beg for knowledge. “Tell me who you are, where you’re from.” Lykon huffs and sighs, but seems secretly pleased to have an audience. He speaks his tales with a great laugh in his chest. He moves his arms about to show his enthusiasm. He feels no impropriety at touching my shoulder as he speaks, leaning in close to tell me salacious details that blush my face. 

As we speak, we move. Quynh may be an angel, but Andromache is her guiding light. We do as Andromache says. It is...uncomfortable. Andromache is tall and ferocious, she moves as a soldier moves. Her legs trek across difficult terrain with little trouble. She and Quynh hoist themselves over hills and valleys, and they walk with their skin mostly bare. I find myself too ashamed to look at them, and too uncertain when it comes to following their lead. 

“It is not done,” I tell Lykon quietly. “Women in battle. They should be at home.” 

“Those women will kill you faster than you could blink, little brother,” Lykon tells me in turn. 

“But it is not safe!” 

“For whom?” he laughs. “They are immortal. They cannot die! You know of the Greeks, yes? The Romans? A good nobleman like you? Think of them as Artemis and Athena. Diana and Minerva. Yes?”

“Yes.” 

Still. At night when we prepare for sleep they strip off the gowns and languish with their bosoms free and the sweet triangle of life open for all to witness. I keep my face stubbornly turned away despite how Lykon grins and goes to them. They kiss and touch each other and I tremble with the desire to leave and the knowledge that I have nowhere to go. 

Strangely, the only solace I have during this time is knowing that Yusuf is also turned away from them. He gives them the same privacy I afford them. We are conjoined in our separation and our manners. 

It has been two months since Jerusalem. We still have not spoken. 

* * *

Five times a day, Yusuf slips from our group and says he needs something. Water. A moment’s privacy. A chance to relieve himself. Five times a day, the group pretends they aren’t aware what he’s doing. Lykon rolls his eyes. Andromache and Quynh turn their heads towards each other and speak in a language that I do not know. Perhaps it is the eastern tongue that Lykon had mentioned. Perhaps it is something that predates even Greek itself. 

I fashion a cross from our firewood. I hold it to my chest as I sleep. Latin slips from my tongue in almost feverishly in the evenings. As Lykon, Quynh, and Andromache join together in iniquitous passion. And when I sleep, my dreams of them have been replaced instead by the sounds of Rebekah’s screaming. Her tears as she burns. Her mother’s terror and her sisters’ cries. I wake with my breath caught in my throat, and sometimes Yusuf’s brown eyes catch mine over the dying fire. I cannot tell if he has slept, or if he woke at the sound of my dreams. 

Sometimes, I am able to go back to sleep. I close my eyes and will my mind into silence. I grit my teeth against the pain I felt and force the slumber upon me. Many more times, such efforts go in vain. I lay there, staring at the stars in a half tormented haze. Rebekah’s sweet face - a brand against my chest. 

It is almost winter when the pain becomes too much. I wake from another thrashing horror, rousing not only Yusuf, but Andromache, Quynh, and Lykon too. They all stare at me as though I’ve done something unimaginable. Quynh huffs and rolls onto her side. She presses her nose to Andromache’s bosom and loops her arms around her waist. She is settled in moments. Bile threatens to re-emerge from my stomach and I excuse myself in my own tongue so that I may relieve it in dignity. 

I spew yellow humors onto the ground beneath my feet some one hundred paces from the others. I kneel there for a long while, coughing and gagging as I trick myself into thinking I can smell Rebekah’s flesh burning beneath my nose. Tears well at my eyes and I swat at them. God’s will, I remind myself fervently. She was killed for God’s will. 

I fumble for my cross as I weep. Desperate for the reminder. For the feel of something. For an answer. Please, God, please tell me why. “Nicolo,” Yusuf speaks. I turn so quickly I fall back onto my haunches. The cross clatters when I try to brace my fall. He reaches for me, and I flinch, half expecting to be killed again. Instead, he catches my arm and adjusts my position. Balances me so I am no longer liable to fall. 

“I did not intend to disturb,” I say in his tongue. Lykon’s lessons have been helpful. Though the vowels still trouble me more than I feel they should, the words now take shape as proper words. They form sentences that sound correct, even to my poor ear. 

I swat at my eyes and try to hide the tears. There must be a place I can go. Somewhere that I can be where I will not be a disturbance. Somewhere I can pray. I must pray. If I pray, then God will answer. I am ordained. I am a priest, I joined His crusade. I was there when the Holy City was proclaimed for the christian army. Even if I faltered in protecting those God deemed unworthy, surely my prolonged existence means God needs me for something. Surely. 

Yusuf says, “You dream every night,” and he does not release my arm. Instead, his fingers squeeze. I wonder if he will break it. If he will kill me here in the dark. I wonder if it will take this time, and realize suddenly that I would long for such a thing. That I am ready to walk in the cool dark of the night, to wherever my final passage goes. A man should not live past his time. I have lived far too long past mine. 

I feel my lips move through another prayer. A reaction that’s become almost habitual. When my mind falters around possibility I pray. Father Thomas always encouraged me to pray. Perhaps prayer could wipe away all my sins. Now, then, in the future. Perhaps prayer could wipe away my very existence. 

Yusuf says, “Nicolo,” and shakes my arm roughly. My head rolls back and forth along my spine, like a weighted anchor being swung every which way. My tears fall in earnest, and I meet Yusuf’s brown eyes. They are black in the night. His dark hair cascades in thick curls around his face. He is an image of Christ on the Cross, as I’ve always imagined Him. Beard and hair and skin that subtle olive brown. Only he is a saracen and not a hebrew. 

“Why did God wish for Rebekah?” I ask him. His fingers squeeze painfully around my arm. He will break it soon. Snap the bone and leave me to heal. I wait for it to happen, but the pressure lessons the longer I wait. 

Yusuf says, “Did you not say it was God’s will?” 

“But  _ why?”  _

“Who are we to question God?” 

“Are we not immortals?” I breathe the word into the space between us. I speak it like a secret. I lean towards him, close enough that I hoped I might see the brown of his eyes. But even this close, the dark casts them only in shades of black. His other hand braces my other arm. We are breathing each other’s air. I shiver at the intimacy. No one has touched me so in a long while. 

Lykon’s touches were fleeting and frequent, but never so tight. So close. So ever present. Even before, when Yusuf stripped me of my clothes and dressed me as a jew, he did so without lingering on my limbs. Now, this close, I can feel his heat. His very presence. Father Thomas told me prayers to speak when my mind turned this way and that. He gave me reparations to perform when I could not focus. I think them now.  _ Ave maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus… _

No sooner had I finished the first recitation than does my mind return to me just as Father Thomas always said it would. I wrench away from Yusuf. I fall back. He does not catch me. I scramble until my spine collides with a tree, and then I spew bile once more. Tears come to my eyes. I sob again, this time not for Rebekah, but for my soul. 

What have I done? I dared to say I was more worthy of God’s attention. I dared to suggest that I  _ deserved  _ an audience with God. I dared think that— _ I dared! _

Yusuf slips in close behind me. I flail against him, but he catches my wrist in one hand and my hair in the other. He turns me so that when I spew once more, it is more  _ graceful  _ than it would have been otherwise. 

We stay like that for several minutes. Yusuf hushes me, hissing noises from beneath his breath as he gently rubs his thumb this way and that on my wrist. “They say God does not exist,” I whisper in my tongue once I’ve run out of bile and have only a convulsing stomach to tend to. 

“I have always believed in God,” Yusuf admits in the same, though he uses his word for it.  _ Allah.  _ It is more beautiful, I think, than the word I use.  _ Dio.  _ His word sounds like a praise and exclamation in one, where mine lacks the honor such a name deserves. “I do not believe all they say.” 

At this, I find myself looking back into his eyes. Those brown eyes turned black. They are beautiful. I’ve never seen such eyes before. I know not the words to describe them. Not in my language, or his, or Quynh’s, nor Andromache’s. They seem beyond such mortal descriptions, and yet my immortal form can conjure no new words to bequeath their divinity. 

“They have lived so long. Who are we to question?” 

“Are we not immortals?” he asks, lips pulling up into a smile that crinkles his eyes at the corners. The smile fades as I attempt to match it with my own. I find my pitiful attempt fades with it, dejection tugging me back into despair. “Tell me, Nicolo. Tell me from your heart. Tell me true. Do you believe the christians did right in Jerusalem?” 

“No,” I say the word in my tongue. In his tongue. I repeat it in every tongue I know, faster and faster until it swirls together. I grip his arms now, in a parody of his embrace of moments ago. I squeeze my fingers into his skin. “Please, please, no. No. But I do not...I do not understand. Why would God allow it? Why can it happen? Why you? Why me? Why them? Why this? To what purpose is all of this given? I...I do not understand why Rebekah died in my arms and I was reformed, alive, waking with her-with her—” the tears are coming again, and he shifts his position so his hand touches the back of my head. 

He pulls me to his chest. I press my cheek to his body and I breathe in the scent of his sweat. One hand goes to cup the back of my neck, the other wraps around my back in tender embrace. He holds me to him as I weep as a child. “I was raised to hate you,” I tell him. 

“I never thought of you, until your armies came to Antioch.” And he lost his mother, his five sisters, and his father. 

It is a long time before we move apart. The sun rises on the horizon and I can hear the others rising for the start of the day. Still, his hand cups my head to him. His arm rests steady upon my spine. I close my eyes, and wonder if this is how Rebekah felt before she died. If she found any comfort in my poor embrace as she was burned alive by an army I once served. 

* * *

Andromache doesn’t care for the christians. She scowls at the thought of our faith, and she rolls her eyes whenever I make the sign of the cross. She tells us that the Christians did wrong in invading Syria, and that she intends to fight against their armies and help the captured city-states that were created. She says this while looking at me in the eye, knowing that of all the members of this group I will not agree. 

I do not. 

My heart leaps into my throat at the idea of it. I feel the tension in my lungs. My fingers fumble for the cross I made, twisted from my stupidity in the night. Confusion swells within me. Father Thomas’ preachings burn in my ears.  _ Devils.  _ They must be. To reject God so. 

But what if they are right? What if God truly doesn’t exist? What if I am wrong? 

_ Sinner.  _ My mind replies immediately, hissing in the dark undertones of my father’s voice. I flinch away from it. I squeeze my crooked cross. 

I look to Yusuf, but find that he does not disagree with Andromache’s proclamation. He seems eager to revenge himself upon the Christians. He does not ask me to think of Rebekah. He makes no attempts to persuade me to their cause. He simply gathers the sword he’d plucked off a body on our way out of Jerusalem, and swivels it in his hand. He says “I will fight,” and Andromache smiles. 

They make plans around me. Where to strike, how to integrate with the army. How to hide the obvious womanhood of Andromache and Quynh so that their presence is less noticeable in the crush of the battle. I tremble as I hear them speak. I feel weak and unsteady. I imagine myself fighting against them, attempting to resist. I then imagine Rebekah’s body in my arms. I reject both scenarios entirely. 

When they prepare for departure, I say I am staying where I am. 

No one is surprised. “We’ll be back soon enough,” Quynh says. “We won’t dream of you anymore, since we’ve met now. So don’t leave if you want to be found.” I nod, though I’m uncertain if I want to be found. 

They leave. One by one. Yusuf is the last. He looks at me for a long while. “I will find you a cross,” he says. I have no doubt that of the many bodies he will make, one will be wearing a cross about their neck. I shiver at the kindness served with a devil’s kiss. He leaves, and I am alone. 

* * *

I spend the first day tending to my fire and warming my hands at its hearth. I think of home, that day. I think of Genova. I think of the how Maria-Theresa and I spent playing music deep into the night. She had a talent for the lute, one cultivated over many years of dedicated practice. She plucked the strings with such deftness that I was ever in awe of her ability. Though I found myself a clumsy student, we enjoyed our time together, and we made music that even brought a smile to my father’s stern face. 

I think I would much prefer a lute to a cross, upon the return of the others. The cross I can only pray with, where the lute I can make something of my situation. Even if I am uncertain what that something is yet. Shame fills me as I consider that. I hate that I cannot shake its yolk. I am terrified of what that means I’ve become if I do. 

On the second day, I recite every psalm and prayer I can think of. I beg for God’s guidance. I yearn for His understanding. I pace fervently around the campsite. I dart my eyes into the woods in hopes of spying some messenger I’d not noticed before. There is no such messenger. I am alone. 

Utterly alone. 

Panic seizes my chest. I collapse by my fire and tend to it in desperation. What if they cannot find me again? What if they have misplaced me? Should I wait here for eternity for them to arrive? What if they’ve decided that because I did not join them, I am not worthy of their partnership? Should I be grateful for their departure? 

What if I went to the church and presented myself before them? 

But no, I am no son of God. I do not deserve my immortality. I am devil cursed and they will see that for what it is. They will know that I did not fight in Jerusalem, that I fled from the battlefields and I could not even kill one saracen. I am a failure. And the church will see me punished for my behavior. 

The third day I spend in listless despair. I wish, fervently, for someone to find me. Anyone. Anyone at all. 

Please, God. I do not wish to be alone any more, with nothing but the sounds of the woods to keep me company. 

* * *

It is a long time before that prayer is answered. 

* * *

I discover that I do not need to eat or drink. For I have not done either since the others left. I have no need of the fire, for the chill of the night does not end my longevity in my sleep. I have no need to move. For without food or water, my body produces no waste. I lay on the ground and I sleep. 

I die once from the claws and fangs of an animal I did not notice, but I am pieced back together by morning and the animal has left. My clothes are torn and ragged. My skin is covered in blood that mocks the possibility of resting forever. I lay down in the gore I made, and I tell myself to sleep. It is better to sleep. 

Perhaps I die more times, from the thirst, the hunger, the cold. I do not know. Not truly. Dying of those things seems so natural. From one breath to the next. I consider the few moments that I tear myself jerking from my slumber and I wonder: did I die again? Is this a new life? Can it really be considered dying if I wake in perpetuity? 

I do not think on these much. 

I close my eyes. I hug my arms around my body. I quietly whisper a request to no longer be alone. I think about moving, but the fear of never being found overrides the fear of isolation. They will return. They must. Eventually, the fighting will stop. I will myself to sleep. 

I do not know how long I slept. 

I know only, that I did. 

* * *

Yusuf wakes me in the spring. It is hot. Insects have taken to crawling on me, gnawing at my flesh and making off with my blood. The wound heals as soon as it is made and I find methods to sleep through their stinging. I heard him approach, though I considered him another animal from the woods. A bear perhaps. Or a lion. He is neither. He kneels at my side, and instead of biting through my arm or tearing open my ribcage, he speaks my name. “Nicolo?” He touches my shoulder. “Nicolo? Wake up.”

So I wake. I look at him. His dark curls hang like ivy around his face. His brown eyes, so deep and lovely, roam over my body as if I were his supplicant. He is frowning. “Are you all right?” he asks in my language. 

“Please don’t leave me alone,” I ask of him. His frown deepens. He bends over me. I still have made no attempt to rise. He does it for me. He clutches my shoulder with a fierce warrior’s grip and he hoists me until I am upright. I sway, blood swiveling about in places it had long since abandoned. Pain sluices through my body, but it disappears as quickly as it comes, healing the hurts immediately. 

Rough hands cup my face. I feel my eyes flutter. This is the longest I’ve been awake in….seasons. I barely remember the winter. Fall seemed so long ago. I tip forward, letting him support my weight. I yearn to return to sleep. Or wake. Or do something. I cannot wholly tell if this is real, or simply another dream. It would be nice to dream of Yusuf. He was so kind to me. Despite the things I said, despite the words I used, he was kind. 

“Get him up,” Andromache says from behind Yusuf. There is something in her voice I do not recognize. He does not hesitate to listen to her, though. He adjusts his grip and I am hauled to my feet. My legs are useless beneath me. I sprawl against his chest. “Get him walking. No, here,” she hands him something. “Have him drink.” 

I am turned in Yusuf’s grasp, my useless legs keep trying to collapse beneath me. I yearn to lay down once more. Please, it’s too much. Wait. Please. I need patience. I’m too tired. Yusuf secures my waist with an arm and then brings the water skein to my lips. I gag on it as my mouth fills for the first time since they left. 

I choke, coughing, gagging. I fear that I will drown, then realize that I can’t. I laugh, and the water chokes me even more. He stops pouring it down my throat and I sag further against his body. “Make him walk.” Andromache says. 

Yusuf slings one of my arms across his shoulders and the other repositions itself around my waist. He drags me for several paces before my feet finally manage to move on their own. One foot in front of the other. I relearn how to live. 

Quietly, in his own tongue, Yusuf whispers apologies I do not think he meant me to hear. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You should not have been left on your own. I’m sorry.”

When I tell him, “It’s all right. I didn’t die for long,” it is the wrong thing to say. His grip turns harsh on my body. He stops his apologies, but he makes no effort to stop moving. In fact, he marches further. More and more until my feet have relearned their purpose. I walk without support. I pretend that I am human. He walks me back to camp, and I am sat before a fire. It warms my bones and chases away the insects. 

Andromache, Quynh, and Lykon have prepared food for us. Quynh and Lykon look at me with expressions I cannot understand. Andromache looks at me in sorrow. She places a hand on my shoulder. She apologizes. I do not know what for. I’m too tired to work it out. 

I eat with them. Then I go to rest. No one stops me. But in the morning, Andromache says we must leave this place. Lykon produces fresh clothing for me to wear. I have become so numb to my nakedness that the thought of clothing surprises me. I struggle to put them on. Yusuf assists. He helps my hands go through the proper holes, he ties the laces at my front. He helps my feet into my boots. 

When the others make to depart, I find myself still sitting at the base of a tree that had become my home. Yusuf needs to yank me to my feet. He squeezes my hand tight, and leads me after the others. “Me too?” I ask dumbly. 

“You are never being left behind again,” Yusuf promises darkly. 

“Oh,” I say. “I would like that very much.” He squeezes my hand again, and does not let go as we walk. 

I leave my cross behind, and I do not miss its presence. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: brief mentions of Nicolo/OC

Andromache talks to me. For hours every day she stays at my side and she speaks to me. Sometimes I do not know what I am meant to say, but she doesn’t seem to mind my silence. She speaks to me anyway. She tells me stories that I never thought I’d hear. Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Tales of King Alfred of Wessex. 

She touches my wrist. She hugs me, drawing me into her arms like Maria-Theresa would. Sisterly and fond. I duck my head to the curve of her throat. She is so tall that I feel small beside her. She runs her hand over my hair and squeezes the back of my neck. “You’re not alone,” she tells me every day. “We are here.” 

Yes. They are here. 

Lykon continues teaching me the saracen tongue. Yusuf helps, and we engage in fluent conversations. Though I find myself halting and hesitating, not knowing how to start the conversations I wished too, after so long with only silent prayer to guide me. 

It is Quynh who pulls me aside and talks to me of sleep. Of what I’d done while they’d been gone. “It is easy enough to just sleep the world away,” she says. “I once slept for twenty years. Rolling over and over until I chose to wake.”

“Years?” I ask, wondering how long it had truly been for me. She pat my hand. 

“We were gone five months,” she says. “But sometimes you wish to sleep like that again, yes?” 

“Yes.” After days of walking, after the press of conversation that fills my head with so much noise, there are moments when I wish to shut it out. To lay down by my tree and just rest. To forget that I am still alive. 

Quynh flicks her head, tossing hair over her shoulder in a practiced move. It is so long, I wonder how many centuries it took her to perfect the motion. Not one strand remains at her front. They all settle into the perfect position at her back. “You are alive, Nicolo. And you will continue to be alive no matter what happens. You can sleep and pretend the world does not exist. Or you can find a path and follow it. But if you sleep, you will miss every opportunity that comes your way. And I think you know this.” 

“Why did you wake?” I ask her. 

“Andromache found me.” She meets my eyes. “Just as we found you.” She leaves, then, to walk with Andromache. 

My side does not remain empty for long. Her absence is filled with Yusuf. Every member of our group seems determined to not let me have a moment’s peace, a moment’s privacy where I might choose to lay down and waste away. I cannot tell if I am grateful for their determination or simply more exhausted by it. But Yusuf’s presence is less grating than the rest. He is quiet, where the others will attempt to talk to me. He lets me think. 

I fear telling him that I am not thinking of anything. That for many hours all I focus on are the sound of my feet as they walk through the empty realms of men, or the feel of my breath as it puffs from my lips. I fear telling him that his conscientious nature is not providing me with the chance to conjure some great philosophy or answer to our eternal questions of _why_ and _how_ and _what next?_

But perhaps he does not seek such answers from me. Perhaps he too is listening to the sounds we make as we move. Feeling his breath fill and leave his lungs. Perhaps he too relishes not having to answer questions he cannot answer, or come to terms with the scale of history that Andromache, Quynh, and Lykon have between them. 

At mealtimes, food is served silently. We eat without talking. Andromache always ensures that we hunt as we travel. There is always meat to eat. It sits strangely in my stomach after so long abstaining. I lick after its juices on my fingers and my gut clenches as it rolls the food about within. 

During one of Andromache’s usual talking moments, as we walk to wherever she leads us to, I ask her: “Why eat if we do not have to?” 

She seems to think about it. She does not answer for many moments. I worry that perhaps I hadn’t spoken the words at all, merely thought them so loud I’d imagined their presence on my tongue. But eventually she says her response: “Because it feels nice to eat.” 

I blush at the simplicity of it. Even more so, when I add a thought of my own. “It reminds us we are human?” 

“They say the gods once feasted on ambrosia alone,” she says. “We have no need for ambrosia. But the food of the earth is ours for the taking. It has tastes and flavors that we are permitted to try. Why squander it? Why ignore the ache in our stomach just to relish in our longevity?”

I thank her for her wisdom, and she seems to realize that I am not in a position to speak more to her now. She lets me think, and leaves to play with Quynh. Yusuf immediately slides into her place. I suspect he expects silence from me, as always, but now I have thoughts to share. Thoughts that I am eager to discuss. 

“What does it mean to be human?” I ask him. 

We debate philosophy for the rest of the day, well into the night, and deep into the next morning. We debate it on the day that follows, and the day that follows that, and I did not know it, but we will continue to debate it for the next nine hundred years. 

But that comes later, and this is now.

* * *

Yusuf is bright and quick witted. He teases and he laughs. He tells me stories of his past, of his five sisters who he complains about in proper brotherly fashion. He has such a lovely smile, I think, as his teeth glimmer brightly in the sun. He walks with confidence earned from years of being in control. Of being sure each step he takes is the right one. 

I walk with my shoulders hunched and my head aimed downward. I avoid eye contact with my fellows, and still hesitate when they touch me. And oh, how they touch me. Lykon with his ever pleasant greetings. Quynh and her seductive body, sliding along my own. She presses her breasts to my arm and I feel my breath leave my chest. My teeth click closed and my eyes widen in panic, and she laughs as she pulls away. She calls me names, teasing and fond, as she drapes herself against Andromache in the same fashion. 

“Have you ever felt a woman properly?” Quynh asks me. 

“It is improper,” I say. Every muscle in my body feels tight. My lungs still are not properly filling the way they should. I twist my head toward Yusuf, half desperate for something I cannot name. My face feels so warm I wonder if I will die again from the embarrassment of it all. The shame. 

“How cruel to tease,” Yusuf says to Quynh. He is smiling, and she detangles herself from Andromache to wrap her arms around Yusuf’s neck. They are pressed so close that I must turn my gaze from him. I seek out Andromache who seems only amused at Quynh’s flirtations. “Where I am from, if a woman acted as you did, she would be disciplined,” Yusuf informs. 

I hear the blade before I hear Quynh. I force myself to look back at them. Quynh’s left hand is tangled in Yusuf’s hair. Her right holds a wicked blade to his throat. His arms are spread wide at his side, showing he means her no harm even as she presses the blade hard enough to draw blood. “No!” I yell, stupid in my forgetfulness. Yusuf will not die to her whim, but the sight of it is enough to douse the heat that had filled me moments prior, turning my body cold with a rage I’d not known in years. Both stare at me, openly. She’d been saying something to him before I’d shouted. Something likely teasing and fond. But at my yell, she’d stopped - lips parted in confused wonder. I babble, “Stop—please,” like a fool. 

She releases him. “It is only a play,” she says carefully. The wound on Yusuf’s throat is already healing. The blood is barely visible any longer. He wipes it away with a swipe of his fingers and it is gone. Vanished with my pride. “We cannot die.” But we can. We _can_ die. We only wake again when the dying is done. There are not words enough to explain this properly. There are not descriptions enough that can clearly distinguish my thoughts on the matter. Only life, and death, and nothing of the continual cycle in which we live. 

“Why chase death when we do not have to?” I mumble, floundering over inadequate descriptions. 

Yusuf approaches. He rests a hand on my shoulder. “Nicolo’s right.” He’s smiling. “I have no interest in dying. It is not fun in the least, no?” He gives my shoulder a slight nudge, urging me to keep walking. So I do. “Thank you for worrying,” he says quieter. Softer. “Do you know, I think they’ve lived so long, they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human. That death is not something that comes naturally in this way.” 

Relief floods through me at the acceptance. I sag slightly beneath his gentle touch. “I do not wish to see you hurt,” I tell him. I still have not asked what happened while they were away, fighting a war I could not fight. 

“One might think you are fond of me after all, Nicolo.” 

“I am.” Admitting it comes easily. How could I not be fond of this man? This man who was there when I first awoke to find myself undead and not-dead in one. This man who drew pictures of his family in the sand, who sheltered me and hid me when he feared I would be turned out from Jerusalem and left to starve in a desert. This man who pulled me from a tree I’d planted myself at, preparing to sleep through my existence, and who bade me to walk. No...I am fond of this man, and it does not shame me to admit it. 

His brown eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles at me. He squeezes my shoulder once more, then asks me to tell him my favorite prayer and why. I fumble at the question. 

I say, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” My face is warm as Yusuf asks me its origin. I can feel the heat of his body so close to mine. It doesn’t feel a sin. 

* * *

I was seventeen when I joined the Monastery. Father Thomas led me to the room that I would share with my sworn brothers. He provided the cassock and a copy of texts he wished me to transcribe. Worms had eaten through the pages and some of the lettering had gone bad over time. I sat by a candle for hours at a time, carefully tracing and retracing the letters onto fresh parchment. I dipped my quill in ink and drew fanciful figures in the margins to accentuate the document appropriately. 

And at night, Father Thomas would review my work. He’d stand behind me, one hand on my shoulder, the other resting on the desk before us. He leaned over my body, the heat of his chest warming the back of my neck. I could feel his heart beating against my head. I could smell him. The stale sweat of a man who had gardened long and hard in the fields behind the Monastery, and who had returned only to offer praise to the Lord, our God. 

When he praised my work, his words electrified my mind. I wished only to make him proud. I would do anything to please him. Anything at all. He cautioned me to pray every evening, lest I turn to sin. I prayed and prayed and prayed. 

And when we sinned, the sin was ours to atone for. 

* * *

When I do not permit myself to sleep as I did over the winter they’d been gone, and only sleep naturally as one would if they were truly mortal, I dream poorly. I dream of Rebekah and death. I dream of Jerusalem on fire. I dream of the jews that had been slaughtered. I dream of my father discovering me with a serving boy and sentencing me to a monastery I’d already longed to go to. I dream of Yusuf dying at Quynh’s blade. Over and over and over again. Only sometimes, he did not wake. He lay there dead at her feet, and the cold chill of horror that wraps around me in response is enough to shudder me into wakefulness. 

His brown eyes are on me each time I wake. “You speak in your sleep,” he says. I am too cold to feel shamed. I shiver and reach for the fire that has died down. He helps me bring it back to life. I laugh.

“It is like us,” I say. It is nonsensical, but he does not question it. 

“Nicolo,” he says, my name soft on his lips. I am so cold. Even in the heat of the flame, I cannot bring the warmth deep within. I tremble endlessly, moving closer and closer, but still my chest aches with a chill that I cannot name. 

Quynh sleeps with her head on Andromache’s chest. Lykon sleeps with his arms around them both. His stomach pressed to Andromache’s back, his arms stretching over them in protective embrace. It is both obscene and divine. I cannot imagine a more beautiful view, anymore than I can imagine Father Thomas’ shouts of outrage in response. He would be beside himself with rage. He would command punishments. He would insist on restitution. The things the women did with one another, penetrating each other like men, it is unlike anything I, or Father Thomas, could have ever imagined. And that they lie with the same man over and over again, in carnal sin and literal repose, in conjunction with their union is beyond the contemplations of the church. 

And yet they look so content. 

And yet they look so warm. 

“Nicolo,” Yusuf says, my name gentle and sweet in his mouth. I meet his brown eyes, illuminated by the light of the fire. So deep and lovely. “You are cold.” It is statement and fact. “Would you want me to sleep closer? Would it help?” 

During the winters at the monastery, during the campaign in the war, such things were commonplace. There is an innocence to the asking, and I know he is asking as a friend. A comrade. Yet my mind cannot pull away from the image of Quynh and Andromache and Lykon. They slept together not for warmth, but for something far more meaningful than mere comfort. They had between them what Father Thomas insisted was unconscionable for any who did not adhere to the strict teachings of Our Father. They had between them, what would have earned me far too many prayers for penance than my mortal life could have filled. 

Yusuf asks me if I wish him to be close, and I think, _yes._ But I wish for something more than what he is asking. It would be nice, I think, to have someone to give my heart to. It would be nice, I think, to have someone who will hold me not just for warmth, but because they wish for me to be in their arms. Oh. 

I look at him. I _look_ at him. He is alone as well. He lies with no one. He has not slipped close to the embrace of Lykon, Quynh, and Andromache. He as stayed on his own. He has no one to embrace, or shelter his heart. He has no one to find tender joy in. 

I ask him, “Are you cold too?”

He answers, “Yes, Nicolo.” I nod then, and he comes to lay beside me. His arms wrap around my body. The chill in my chest dissipates as soon as I am folded into his embrace. My eyes are heavy. I close them and I shift to lay my head against the ground. But his arm is there. His left arm has snaked beneath my head. Like a pillow it cradles my skull. His skin is warm against my face. His scent is rich and poignant. I feel his breath against my neck. I feel his chest expand as air fills his lungs. I feel his heat, so much more intimate than the unfeeling touch of the fire. 

I sleep. I dream of Rebekah laughing. I dream of our little room in Jerusalem. Him coming home from working. We would talk to one another then. We would tell each other of our days. He would tell me about the people he met, and the things he did. I would listen and we would take our meals side by side. I prayed over my food and he watched me with interest before he took his first bite. 

I sleep until morning, and then—gratefully—I wake with the sun and I find myself eager to explore the next day. Yusuf wakes with me. He smiles. I thank him for his kindness. 

We never again sleep apart.


	4. Chapter 4

Quynh delights in our new sleeping arrangements. She makes comments that I am not sure I am meant to understand. She grins in a way that I find incalculable. She whispers heatedly with Andromache and Lykon and they giggle together with their heads angled down and their voices filled with mirth. 

“It has taken you a long while to understand your heart,” Quynh tells me one week after I have found my bliss at night, sleeping in the warm heat of Yusuf’s embrace. 

“I do not dream poorly when he is near,” I say, stupidly, as if I cannot understand what she is implying. I suspect, and have suspected for some time, that she has little care for the propriety that is necessary to live in the world that I came from. She and Andromache are unlike any women I had ever met. I doubt that I will ever meet a woman like them ever again. 

I feel daring near her at times. Equally, I feel shy and desperate for the rigid comfort of the world I knew before. She broadens my mind while tearing apart the foundations of my life. I am shaken before her, and when she targets me so poignantly I am a child arguing semantics with an adult who has heard all the arguments before and offers no relief to my poor unformed mind. 

Quynh does not let the matter lie at that. She loops her arm through mine. She pretend-whispers to me in  _ sotto voce _ , loud enough so that all can hear. “Do you not enjoy it when he presses against you? Do you not feel good, knowing that he has chosen you out of all of us to  _ know?”  _

“He’s not—we’ve not—” I seek him out naturally. He is never far. He is standing with Lykon, their arms around each other’s shoulders as they peer over a map Lykon has produced from his satchel. Yusuf is looking toward us though. He is frowning, and I panic - thinking perhaps he has decided that Quynh’s teasing is too much for him. Please, I think, Please do not leave me alone again. 

“Quynh, you tease too much,” he says, voicing my fears. But he holds out his hand, waving me toward him. I shake her loose and hurry to his side. His fingers wrap comfortingly around my shoulder. He smiles. “Would you like to see where Andromache is taking us?” he asks. 

I nod, breathless with desire, and he unwinds himself from Lykon to wrap his arm around _my_ shoulders instead. He presses in close. So close. I nearly choke on his scent. It fills me with such sensations that I cannot focus on the map or his words, so lost am I in the idea that I could spend all of eternity with this smell alone. 

No, with this smell, and his arms around me at night. His smile in the mornings. His eyes throughout the day. Those beautiful brown eyes that captivate me each time I meet them with my own. I fold myself against his side. I keep my head ducked so I can press in even more. I fear, only for a moment, that he will cast me away, but he merely holds me to him. Possessive and strong. 

Father Thomas told me to pray when my thoughts turned to the indecent. I could whisper the Lord’s Prayer, or the  _ Ave Maria  _ unconsciously for all of eternity. I could chant hymnals and sing verses retained only for the most pious. But in Yusuf’s presence, my thoughts were filled with one song and one song alone. 

I chant it in my mind, skipping verses and stanzas until it forms the perfect combination of words and phrases. A new song made pure by my thoughts of Yusuf, who is the sum of my thoughts and passions. The blessed balm who chases my fears and darkness, and whispers for me to wake. Wake up. Walk and rise and be alive. 

_ Who is this, who comes up from the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all spices of the merchant? Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for your love is better than wine. Your oils have a pleasing fragrance. Your name is oil poured out, therefore the virgins love you. Take me away with you…. _

Please, take me away with you. 

* * *

Seasons change. 

We travel east, and I meet Quynh’s people. Or rather, the people who live in the lands she was born in. For she was born so long ago, that there is nothing left of her tribe.

I taste their food and I learn their language. We spend a year traveling through the wet swamps of her homeland, then through the chilly mountain passes that separate it from their neighbors. Andromache instructs us on the ways of war. She wields an axe with the grace of a lady but the might of a god. She is vibrant in a fight. Her hair whorls about her in a halo of gold and brown. She is never so alive than when she can take the life from another. 

They had brought me a sword back from Jerusalem. Not a cross as Yusuf has suggested, but a sword. I had not thought to look at it until we’d crossed the mountains into Quynh’s homeland, but when Andromache suggests that Yusuf and I train, it finds its way into my hands. It is well balanced, fine, and fits well in my palm. It is reminiscent of my own sword, lost on the battlefield beneath Yusuf’s body between one kill and the next. He tells me that he thought it matched well enough when he found it. He even says with the hilt shaped just so, it is almost like a cross. I laugh at the idea, and smile at him. I thank him for his thoughtfulness. I am glad it is not a cross, but I do not tell him that. 

Yusuf’s sword is curved. It is called a scimitar. He lets me handle it occasionally. I feel its weight in my hand. I trace my fingers along the blade. I sharpen it with a whetstone when I sharpen my own. I polish it with a cloth by the fire. Usually a soldier will care for his own weapon, but Yusuf sprawls at my side. He rests his chin on his hand and he watches me work. He smiles so fondly at me that I cannot help but flush under his gaze. I am his sole focus, his only thought. 

I burn under the headiness of such a thing. The power in my hands, the knowledge that a man as powerful as Yusuf would be fascinated by my simple chores. That he could be entertained by my careful movements. I watch as he watches my hands move. I thrill and delight as he follows the arc of my palm along the sword as I shine and sharpen it to perfection. When I return it to him, he breathes in sharply through his nose. He exhales a harsh puff of air. His tongue flicks out across his lips. 

Claim me, I think. Make me yours. 

He takes the scimitar and tells me it is late. We should rest. I go to his side and he wraps his arms around me. He claims me with his heat. He pulls me to his chest and I sigh at the warmth of his limbs. The pressure against my body. My heart pounds against my ribs, hard enough to bruise my bones. He flattens a palm against my breast and he feels the roaring of my heart. 

The others are sleeping already, they sleep so easily and so blissfully. They ignore us and our presence in the camp as family often ignores family while sharing warmth in the winter. Yusuf’s head turns. I feel his lips shift against my hair. It could have been an accident. It could have just been the motion needed to get comfortable. 

It feels like a kiss, and I am undone. I lay boneless in his arms. I smile as I slip off to sleep. I think, if this is my eternity, it is not a bad way to exist. 

* * *

Quynh teaches us swordplay that is different than Andromache’s. Her motions are quick and precise. She shows us weak points on the human body. Lykon volunteers to let her kill him to show us. She hacks at his vitals. His blood spews on the ground beneath us. I cannot help but look to Andromache, horrified she would allow Lykon to die over and over for our education. Andromache does not seem averse to the training methods. Why would she? He wakes every time. 

Later, I clean blood off our blades and I think about how Lykon’s face when he died had fluctuated from tragic to jubilant. How he’d laughed at times. How he’d given us advice even as he lay bleeding out. How he’d teased Quynh and said he adored being killed by her and her above all others. 

“You are quiet tonight,” Yusuf tells me from where he’s sprawled. Lykon and the women left us to our own devices. They travelled some ways away so they could reward Lykon for his many good deeds in their own way, without disturbing Yusuf and I. It is not the first time they’d bothered with such courtesy, but it is appreciated nonetheless. I am not fond of listening to their lovemaking. 

Now alone, with no one to overhear us speak, I am relieved at the chance to speak with Yusuf. Still, my thoughts take time in forming. I think in images more than words. In memories. Lykon’s features haunt me as Rebekah’s once had. I feel...a kind of dread that I have not felt in a long while. “I do not wish to kill Lykon again,” I say. The blood has been cleaned from my blade, but I rub at it a few more times just to be certain. I do not know what I will do with my hands if I let them rest. Yusuf is close enough that I could touch him if I was unburdened. I fear what touch I would give. 

As ever, Yusuf seems to know my mind without my speaking. He sits up. He reaches for my sword and carefully returns it to its scabbard. He places it to the side, then shifts even closer. I am sat on a downed log, he on the ground. He is beneath me, but he does not seem to be lesser in any way. His forearms rest on my knees. My breath halts in my throat as he peers up at me. 

“You care very much for our lives don’t you?” he asks. 

My mouth feels dry. My tongue is a useless lump behind my teeth. I yearn to touch his skin. I wish to sink my fingers into the thick curls of cascading hair. His beard that is dark and coarse. I have never felt it before, but I wonder how it would sting against my tender skin. I wonder if it would burn against my flesh and scour me anew. “I do not wish to court our deaths,” I say. It sounded very proper indeed. As if I was not distracted by the pulse I see beating in Yusuf’s throat. Or the way his sweet smell, rich and tangy and  _ his _ has begun to fill the air around me. 

His shifts the weight of his arms. He draws himself closer. We share breath. I am closer to his face than I had ever been before. My lips part, and I make a sound at the back of my throat. It is embarrassing and weak. But oh, how he makes me weak. How he makes me tremble and flush. I would be like Patroclus to his Achilles, and oh, how I would stand before all the arrows of Troy to keep him from harm. 

He kisses me in the heat of the fire. His hands cup my cheeks and I fall from my log. My knees straddle his waist and he grips me to him. He squeezes me in his grasp. I cannot close my eyes for if I close my eyes I will miss every moment of his glory. His eyes, his nose, his lips. He grunts low and deep. He says words in his tongue and I translate them with ease.  _ You will be mine, then?  _

“Yes, yes,” I say. “Only yours. Please. Please only yours.” He grunts again and hoists me up. Our positions are changed. He lays me on the ground. A virginal bride on her wedding day. He strips me of my clothes. My tunic and my breeches and my greaves. He presses his fingers to my chest. He feels my heart beneath his palm and he kisses my lips as he traces patterns down my breastbone toward the flat of my belly and the heat of my groin. 

I gasp beneath his touch. I arch into his fingers. He coos and smiles and nips at my skin. “Nicolo,” he says, my name is a prayer and a swear on his lips. “Nicolo,” he says, my name is honey and grain in his mouth. He cups me, he holds me. I feel wild and unaccountable for my actions. I beg him as a supplicant. I beseech him as a wife. I praise him for his kindness as he takes me in hand and he makes my body feel a passion it has not known in all its life. 

I pant harshly as he removes his clothes from his body. I watch layer after layer fall from his glorious form. The fire flickers shadows across his chest. It casts shades along his skin. He is flawless. Every inch of him is a tapestry of unblemished perfection, woven from a loom built by God’s own hand. I gasp as he feels his way along my shape. I beg him as he whispers demands and requests into my ear. 

Mine, mine, mine, he says. 

Yours, yours, yours, I confirm. I throw my arms around his shoulders as he breeches me at last. Tears fall down my cheeks as pain slices through my body. I gasp and arch as he hoists me onto him. He thrusts madly into my body and all the shame and condemnation Father Thomas meant to build into my mind, as walls against such thoughts and actions, are blinded by the glory of Yusuf’s strength and the wonder of his attentions. 

He grips me, leaking and wet as I am, he strokes me and thrusts into me all at once. I am undone. I am broken and shattered and remade. I am his. “Yours, yours, yours,” I say so much my breath leaves me and dark spots begin to flicker in my eyes. I loll useless in his grip as he breeches me over and over in divine bliss. 

And when he spills, he presses his lips to mine. He kisses me hard enough that our teeth clack together and my breath is stolen into his lungs. I feed him all the air I have left, and he breathes life back into my body. He holds me close, not leaving the moment he’d finished. He holds me close, and instead of telling me to pray for God’s mercy, he tells me that he will never let me go. He tells me that I am his. He tells me that we were made for each other. We died at each other’s hands, and we woke at each other’s mercy, and we will stay together. Now and forever. We are one. We must be. 

“Yes, yes, yes,” I say. “Yours, yours, yours.” 

I babble in my weakness, my desperation. He kisses me. He kisses me over and over. He still resides inside my body. He shifts and moves, and I feel him growing stiff once more. I sob at the feeling, but he ignores my cry and thrusts again. I am tender and sore, and more certain than I had ever been before. “Please,” I whisper. I do not know what I am begging for, but like always, he knows my mind. 

We lay together again and again throughout the night. My body’s aches heal as soon as they form. My stiff muscles realign themselves into perfect order whenever the pain creases too much. My Yusuf kisses me again, and again, and again. He spills in me, again, and again, and again. 

And when at long last we lay together, spent utterly and exhausted, he sprawls at my side and draws figures on my stomach. He languishes with his seed deep within me, as if he’d been searching for a womb that I do not have. He presses his palm to my stomach and I wonder if he can feel how full I am of him. 

“You asked me my favorite prayer,” I say softly. He hums and continues drawing his patterns around my navel. “Do you know the song of songs?” 

“No.”

“It is of Solomon’s bride, who waits for him to return. And of christian faith, awaiting the return of Christ.” 

“Such a song.” He doesn’t continue, it seems he meant it as a statement. I nod despite myself. He smiles and flattens his hand on my skin. He leans down and kisses my collarbone. It sends a shiver and a thrill through me. His bead is just as delightful as I’d imagined. 

Slowly, carefully, I speak the words. 

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for your love is better than wine. Your oils have a pleasing fragrance. Your name is oil poured out, therefore the virgins love you. Take me away with you. Let us hurry. The king has brought me into his rooms…” He is surprised by the content. He lifts his head and meets my eyes. He grins lasciviously. I grin back. I allow myself the pleasure of touching his hair. Of feeling his beard with my palm. I moan wantonly, whorish in my desire, as he drags his blessed touch along the inside of my thigh. Still, onwards I continue. On and on I whisper the song, arching into his touch and gasping as he brings me to pleasurable release once more. 

He does not penetrate me as I speak. Instead he seems wholly focused on the way he can mold my body to his will. He need not try as hard as he does. I am already his. I will do anything he desires. Anything at all. I sing him Solomon’s Song, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves…” and he worships me as though I am divine. I gasp and arch and tingle desperately in his touch. I weep at his ministrations and he gently swipes my tears away with the broad pad of his thumb. 

I finish, aching for his body once more, desperate to feel him come to climax within me one final time. “Come—ah—Come away, my beloved! Be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices!”

He captures my mouth in his, and finally, he grants me my wish. 

I have never known such bliss. There is no sin here. There can be no sin here. God could not have created us and then rejected this between us. This is not temptation gone awry, under a devil’s torment. This is too pure for any of that. 

This is love. And God is love. And so I will love Yusuf, and know that God, if he does exist despite Andromache’s and Quynh’s and Lykon’s words, He will not damn me for loving Yusuf. 

And if He does, it will be worth a lifetime in hell, to spend eternity with Yusuf. 

“Eternity, Yusuf,” I whisper as we hold each other that night. I giggle, foolish and simple. He smiles against my hair. He pets my side. It tickles, but I love it too much to shy away. “We can spend  _ eternity  _ together.”  It occurs to me that no great lovers have ever had eternity. Their passions always ended in tragedy. “We will be the first." 

“And what of Andromache, Quynh, and Lykon?” he asks, teasing and fond. 

“The second, then. We’ll be the second. And we’ll have  _ eternity. _ ”

“An eternity of this?” he asks, nipping at my neck. I thrill in delight. 

“Yes, yes, yes,” I whisper. I pray. I concede. Yusuf holds me closer. 

“Yours, yours, yours,” he chants back. We sleep. 

It is bliss, and I have my reason to live. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on falcon-fox-and-coyote.tumblr.com
> 
> I'll be adding more to this in separate installments. Some might be in Nicky's POV, others in 3rd person or whatever seems best for that story. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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